


My friends and even your friends know

by Anonymous



Category: MXM (Band), Produce 101 (TV)
Genre: Domestic, Fluff, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 11:07:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14400873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Donghyun seeks explanations from Youngmin. Youngmin provides them contingently.





	My friends and even your friends know

When Donghyun arrives home, he finds Youngmin sitting crosslegged on the couch. Surrounding him and covering every square centimetre of the coffee table are cans of Pepsi, their sides slashed and bent into various shapes. The Stanley knife that, presumably, accomplished all this is sitting amongst the mess, its rusty blade poking out like a jeering tongue. 

"Why?" Donghyun asks - and he feels that he does so in quite a cheerful, breezy manner. This is less a reflection of his cheerful personality, and more because he has already discarded hope of a rational explanation and chooses to embrace whatever's about to tumble from his room mate's mouth. 

"Hm? Oh. Bet with Yongguk," Youngmin says as he examines one mangled Pepsi can, holding it up to the warm light of their standing lamp. Donghyun discreetly slots the Stanley knife's blade down and pockets the offending object. Youngmin doesn't appear inclined to elaborate, so Donghyun asks what he thinks is a pertinent question. 

"You didn't drink all of these?"

Youngmin turns to him, eyes brimming with confusion for a moment before he laughs in Donghyun's face. 

"How would I do that?"

"With your throat?" Donghyun says before he can stop himself. Youngmin laughs harder. The exhaustion from his day waiting tables invades Donghyun's bones with renewed vigour and he leans against Youngmin's side. 

("Do you mind?" he'd once asked. 

They'd only been room mates for a couple of weeks and, on that evening, Donghyun had dozed through a movie. The rousing music at the credits jolted him back to reality. With horror he realised he was a hair's breadth from drooling on his new room mate's (rather comfortable) shoulder. Not wanting to show just how embarrassed he was, he'd picked himself up, as casual as you like, and made a bit of a show of yawning, stretching his arms up above his head till his joints cracked. That wasn't as great an idea to hide his embarrassment as he'd hoped. His t-shirt had ridden up, revealing his scrawny belly to all the world. 'All the world' was currently just Youngmin and that llama plushie on the bookshelf. But still, not cool. Donghyun's face flushed despite his best efforts and, when he shifted around to face his room mate, he was sure he caught Youngmin's eye flit to where he was judiciously pulling his t-shirt back down into place. Ugh, humiliation upon humiliation. 

Pretending to notice none of this, Donghyun had asked those three words. His voice came out low, groggier than he'd thought it would sound. But Youngmin simply shook his head, flashing one of those charming smiles that, after a fortnight of co-habitation, Donghyun was already filing into discrete categories and subcategories in his memory. Anyway, that seemed clear enough, Donghyun had thought, watching the flickering lights of the TV screen illuminate Youngmin's profile in the dim room. Therefore, when Youngmin has asked Donghyun if he'd like to stay up a bit longer and watch a re-run of some anime with him, Donghyun had shrugged and sunk back into Youngmin's side, letting his head rest comfortably on the man's shoulder. 

Fundamentally, Donghyun had mused in the privacy of his head, if God gifts you shoulders like that, then it seems like you really ought to use them for the benefit of mankind. The specific mankind preferably being Donghyun). 

"Where did they come from?" Donghyun's voice is somewhat muffled in Youngmin's big black hoodie. In fairness to Donghyun, Youngmin's hoodie inexplicably smells faintly of chocolate and it's confusing him. Youngmin barely eats sweet things. 

"Hyunbin," Youngmin explains, mumbling into Donghyun's hair - which Donghyun thinks is weird. Not that he's about to complain about it, but isn't it weird? Because Youngmin smells of chocolate, so Donghyun considers it not unreasonable that he should want to bury his nose in his friend's delicious smelling hoodie. But Donghyun was just at work. So if his hair smells of anything, surely it's just sweat and fried chicken. Oh, maybe that's it! Maybe Youngmin wants chicken.  
"He gathered the cans for some art project, but then changed direction and is doing something completely different now. He and Kenta are sculpting figures in modeling chocolate. It's cool... Hey, does this one look like Woojinnie?" He brings a can down into Donghyun's line of sight. It's been slashed up and bent vaguely into the shape of a bird, and Youngmin has drawn a pair of glaring eyes on it in tipex. Donghyun peers at it for a long moment, until he can almost hear the deep voice of Youngmin's little brother coming from its tin beak. It's pointing out the hole in Donghyun's socks and telling him to bin them or learn to darn like a real man. 

"Kinda, yeah," he admits. Youngmin cheers, bouncing in his seat. He almost bounces Donghyun's head off his shoulder, so Donghyun loosely loops his hands around Youngmin's arm to bring him back. "Hey, if I order chicken, will you clear this all away?"

"Oh. Yeah, sure." He's looking down at Donghyun then, and his smile is one that Donghyun hasn't named, but his heart knows it as a feeling that belongs to times like this, when it's just them, and the glow of their standing lamp, and shit on TV, and Youngmin's soft hair falling into his eyes, and crawling home when his feet are in pain and his muscles ache, but knowing that this loser will be here when Donghyun arrives - even if he's doing something stupid like carving Pepsi cans into the likenesses of their friends. The loser in question doesn't look away. Because Donghyun is comfortable, he maintains the eye contact, waiting in case Youngmin has something revelatory to pronounce. He does occasionally. It's not an impossible dream. 

"Rough day?" Youngmin asks. Donghyun yawns at him. 

"Not really. Just long." He stretches his long legs out, careful not to knock the coffee table and all the can monsters on it. (He catches sight of one that looks like a nightmarish Ponyo. He'd known there'd be a Ponyo somewhere). Youngmin's arm comes around to squeeze his shoulders. 

"OK, I'll clear this mess. You order." When Youngmin stands up, rather than expend energy, Donghyun lets himself slide down the couch. Now his neck is at an awkward angle on the armrest and the threadbare cushion he grabbed is a meagre substitute for Youngmin's arms. Nonetheless, Donghyun feels a moment of intense tranquility. With one eye cracked open, he watches his room mate, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, slide a cardboard box back out from under the coffee table. He starts stashing the mangled Pepsi cans away, throwing some in and cautiously balancing others. After a minute or two, Youngmin suddenly stops and looks up. Donghyun blinks a few times to make sure he remembers how to speak. 

"Hey, does it have to be chicken? I sorta want pho or ramen or something."

Donghyun sighs into the armrest, but any effort to scold is pre-emptively destroyed by his unconscious fond grin. 

"We're always getting pho," he points out, peeling himself from the couch and slapping all his pockets until he remembers that his phone is in his backpack which he dropped in the hallway. 

"Yeah, but pho's good." Youngmin's smiling, so Donghyun does too as he shuffles to the hall to get his phone. He's already got that one Vietnamese restaurant's number in there and is debating between which of the two things he orders he'll choose this time. As he leans against the cool wall in the dark hallway to dial, it occurs to Donghyun that there's something wrong with this picture. His tired brain can't seem to recall what that something is, however. He peeks at Youngmin in the sitting room - his green alien socks, his dyed hair looking the colour of honey under the subdued light, the strings of his hoodie - both wildly different lengths - swinging as he works, forehead crinkled in concentration. It doesn't feel like anything's wrong. In fact, apart from the freaky cans, everything feels spectacularly right. Donghyun dismisses that earlier idea. He was over-thinking. He's forgotten it in an instant, eager to order quickly and get back to curling up on the couch, resting in the warmth of his weirdly chocolate-scented room mate.


End file.
